Air advisory through Wednesday in valley
Clark County officials issued an air quality advisory through Wednesday, alerting people with heart and respiratory conditions to stay indoors to avoid the smoke and ozone blown into the Las Vegas Valley from California wildfires.
"Anybody with respiratory problems or cardiac problems should be careful," said Brenda Williams, spokeswoman for the county’s Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management. "They should go inside, close windows and doors and keep air conditioners on."
The same precautions should be taken by children and the elderly.
Wildfires in Los Angeles and Hemet have injected fine dust particles and soot into the atmosphere along with ground-level ozone created from the burning of brush and wood.
"If people breathe that in, it’s going to clog their respiratory system," she said.
Even though the fires are hundreds of miles away, the pollutants rise in the atmosphere and are transported to the Las Vegas Valley by southwesterly winds.
The county’s air quality forecast shows smoke from the Southern California fires will continue to drift into Clark County today.
Ozone and particulate levels remained in the good-to-moderate range at monitoring sites around the valley on Monday.